Barack Obama met the Dalai Lama at the White House on Friday, despite objections from China, which has warned that the meeting would inflict grave damage on Sino-American relations.

The Tibetan spiritual leader is in the US on a speaking tour. The White House did not announce the meeting until late on Thursday, prompting a gruff complaint from Beijing, in what has become something of a diplomatic ritual whenever Obama meets the exiled Buddhist monk.

The two Nobel laureates spent an hour in the White House's Map Room, a step down in prestige from the Oval Office, where the president traditionally meets foreign heads of state. The meeting was closed to reporters.

China accused Obama of letting the Dalai Lama use the White House as a podium to promote anti-Chinese activities. Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China's foreign ministry, said before the meeting that it was "a gross interference in China's domestic politics" and "a severe violation of the principles of international relations. It will inflict grave damages upon the China-US relationship".

China, which routinely responds to foreign leaders' meetings with the Dalai Lama with diplomatic snubs and sanctions, said it had relayed its concerns formally to the US and urged Washington to treat its concerns seriously. China bitterly opposes the Dalai Lama's quest for greater Tibetan autonomy and is wary of Obama's efforts to increase US influence in the region.

China responded with equal vitriol to Obama's meetings with him, in 2010 and 2011, though it did not follow up with concrete measures that would damage ties.

In contrast, Beijing cut off high-level diplomatic ties with the UK for about a year after David Cameron met the Dalai Lama in 2012. Relations only resumed after the British prime minister said he did not plan to meet the spiritual leader again in the near future.

The US had no immediate response to the latest rebuke from China. But in announcing the meeting, the White House said Obama was meeting the Dalai Lama in the latter's capacity as a cultural and religious leader. As if to indicate that a reaction was expected, officials reiterated that the US recognised Tibet as part of China and did not support Tibetan independence.

"The United States supports the Dalai Lama's 'middle way' approach of neither assimilation nor independence for Tibetans in China," said Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House's national security council. She said presidents from both parties had met the Dalai Lama over the decades.

Officials said they were concerned about tensions and deteriorating human rights in China's Tibetan areas, urging Beijing to resume talks with the Dalai Lama or his followers without preconditions.

At least 120 people in Tibet and Tibetan areas of neighbouring Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu provinces have set themselves on fire since 2009 in protest against Chinese rule. Beijing has responded by tightening its grip over the region, deploying hordes of securities forces and implementing elaborate surveillance programmes.

The Dalai Lama has called the self-immolations an ineffectual form of protest, but has also said they are "understandable" and refuses to condemn them.

Relations between the US and China are already on edge because of Beijing's increasingly aggressive steps to assert itself in the region, including in territorial disputes with its smaller neighbours. China's emergence as a leading global economic and military power has strained ties with Washington, and the two have also clashed over cybertheft and human rights.

This week, a Chinese official wrote in a lengthy editorial that Beijing should ignore western criticisms of Tibet and China's human rights record. Beijing had "time on its side" to win over western opinion, Zhu Weiqun, chairman of the ethnic and religious affairs committee of the main advisory body to China's parliament, wrote on the state-run website Tibet.cn.

"We can only push the west to change its way of thinking if we let them understand that China's power cannot be avoided … and that the west's interests lie in development and maintaining ties with China, not the opposite," he wrote.